Determinism Quotes

Hope is a belief in a better tomorrow.,

Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desire less keen. With some, inhibitions and urges may be neutralized by other tendencies. But with every being the primal emotions are there. All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.

Evolutionary biology is imperialistic, overtaking entire fields of endeavor simply by attaching the prefix bio – or neuro -- to their names: bioethics, no comics, even, God help us, neurotheology. Its logic is deployed against helpless laymen as a bully's truncheon or an argument stopper.

If it is irrational and hypocritical to hold a minor to the same standard of behaviour control as a mature adult, it is equally unjust to hold a traumatised and neurologically impaired adult to the same standard as one not so afflicted

Destiny is always a doorstep away, if we know to move in the right direction.

It seemed incredible that this day, a day without warnings or omens, might be that of my implacable death.

Free will, determinism, meaning, existence, etc. are academic problems, not problems in life.

...any object functioning within the physical laws of any particular universe does not have free will ... In terms of human beings, all behavior and cognition cannot appear out of thin air. Behavior and cognition must be the result of prior causes. This is because our brains obey the same laws of a cause and effect physical universe just like any other physical object. All events that occur in the universe are caused by antecedent events.Quantum indeterminacy, which maintains that the state of a system does not determine a unique collection of values for all its measurable properties, is not a valid argument for free will and has been used incorrectly to justify beliefs of independent decision-making. Logically speaking, notions of randomness and indeterminism are actually additional arguments against free will. All events that occur at random in the universe are, by definition, not caused by antecedent events. Or to say it a different way, any random event cannot also be a willed event.By the process of elimination, events that are “willed freely” are events that are neither determined nor random. In other words, in all likelihood events that are “willed freely” are events that simply do not exist.

There’s no such thing as probability," she says, slowly, with minimal movement of her jaw. "Things turn out the way they do.

Not that chance dominated events in the early Solar System, for scientific determinism was also functioning. But chance is an essential factor in all evolutionary events, and the birth and development of our planetary system were not exceptions.

From what deep springs of character our personal philosophies issue, we cannot be sure. In philosophers themselves we seem always able to notice some deep internal correspondence between the man and his philosophy. Are our philosophies, then, merely the inevitable outcome of the body of fate and personal circumstance that is thrust upon each of us? Or are these beliefs the means by which we freely create ourselves as the persons we become? Here, at the very outset, the question of freedom already hovers in the background.

There is certainly no hope left of getting away. And it isn't even terrible; it's possibly funny, if even that. It's embarrassing. That's all. A little embarrassing to realize that I no longer control my life, that the major decisions have already been made, long before I was conscious that any change was occurring.

Thought isn't a form of energy. So how on Earth can it change material processes? That question has still not been answered.

[The materialist] thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe in determinism. I think [the materialist] a slave because he is not allowed to believe in fairies.

You don't choose to choose what you choose in life!